Design Tools & Software

Intel® Quartus® Prime Design Software provides everything you need to design with Intel® SoC FPGAs. It is a complete development package that comes with a user-friendly GUI and technology to help you bring your ideas into reality.

Every SoC FPGA-based embedded system design is unique due to the customized logic programmed into the FPGA. This Intel and Arm developed the toolkit to give you an unprecedented level of FPGA-visibility and control.

What Is a Virtual Platform?

The SoC FPGA virtual platforms includes an instruction set simulator CPU model plus peripheral device models, delivered as a standalone binary executable. Download, install, and run the executable with a prebuilt Linux* image on a host PC. Also use any GDB-compatible debug environment, including Arm Development Studio Intel® FPGA edition toolkit for comprehensive debugging of Bare Metal, Linux, and other OS applications.

When Do I Use a Virtual Platform?

Software developers can use the Intel® Stratix® 10 SoC virtual platform to start embedded software development and debug for the integrated quad-core Arm* Cortex-A53 processor subsystem well before first silicon availability. Additionally, SoC FPGA virtual platforms simplify embedded software development and reduce the need for expensive hardware by enabling large development teams to perform application development and software regression testing in a virtual environment modeling an Intel® SoC FPGA.

Additional Resources

For more information on the Intel® SoC FPGA virtual platform, refer to the following links:

Open Source and Linux* for SoC FPGAs

Intel Enables Linux* on SoC FPGAs and the Nios® II Processor

Intel contributes to the Linux community to enable our SoC FPGA and Nios® II processor customers via the community portal RocketBoards.org. We ensure the availability of Linux* kernels, U-boot, and the meta-Intel layers for Angstrom and the Yocto Project for the Intel® SoC FPGAs. Intel contributes to the open-source community to enable the Linux* kernel to run on its SoC FPGA and Nios® II processor architectures. Contributions include improvements to the general kernel as well as new SoC FPGA and Nios® II processor-specific functions, such as the FPGA manager framework. By nature, these improvements benefit everyone in the Linux community.

Industry-Leading Linux* Support

Intel keeps up with the Linux community by upgrading to the latest stable kernel on kernel.org. Additionally, Intel supports a modern release strategy by updating public git trees every two weeks on RocketBoards.org.

Upstreaming

Intel's approach to Linux* for SoC FPGAs and the Nios® II processor is centered on upstreaming fixes and improvements of the SoC FPGA and Nios® II processor code primarily to kernel.org and DENX.de. Consequently, Intel assembled a Linux team with upstreaming as a key strategy.

Delivery

In addition to providing the latest stable kernel for the SoC FPGA architecture, Intel also supports U-Boot, LTS kernel with and without PREEMPT_RT, and a meta-Intel layer. You can obtain the code via the public code repositories on RocketBoards.org, which is a “one-stop-shop” for Linux* developers working on Intel® SoC FPGAs.

Intel® SoC FPGAs Linux* Ongoing Innovation

Intel contributes to the Linux* kernel, kernel.org. Specifically, Intel innovates by augmenting the Linux* kernel with new features, such as an FPGA manager framework for programming and reconfiguring the FPGA. Furthermore, Intel is enhancing the kernel to better handle memory map reconfiguration via dynamic device trees.

Ecosystem

Our ecosystem partners and the Intel® SoC FPGA user community provide a range of options to meet your SoC FPGA development needs.